How to put a snippet of topic text into the topic list

[Davyc]

I'm wanting to add a snippet (no more than 3 lines) of the text that appears in a topic into the topic list: See below for example:

This is a section of the topic list in a forum:

 

Below is what is inside the topic:

The orange arrow is pointing to the text I want to include in the topic list, but no more than 3 lines regardless of how much text is in the topic. Mock-up is below:

This is going to be a template edit, but what do I put into which template to get this effect, if indeed it is at all possible?

With thanks

Edited August 4, 2020 by Davyc

[bfarber]

4.5 includes an "expanded" view so you can see the first few lines of text in the topic listing.

Is this what you are after?

[Davyc]

It does, but (there's always a but) it kills my topic images and reverts to the default listing.

Expanded view (which is what I would like to see):

 

But it kills the topic image which is what I would like to preserve:

So, what is viewed in the first image that can be transferred to the second image without killing the topic image would be fantastic.

 

[bfarber]

My general recommendation would be to adapt the new layout to add your topic images. That seems like the simplest solution.

[Afrodude]

On 8/5/2020 at 10:18 AM, bfarber said:

4.5 includes an "expanded" view so you can see the first few lines of text in the topic listing.

Is this what you are after?

How to apply this to pages block plugins for topics feeds to show this expanded mode? 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Afrodude

[Afrodude]

@opentype any idea if that even possible?

[Afrodude]

@Stuart Silvester and @Daniel F is it possible to have this in Pages database as block topic feed expanded mode in 4.6.